Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

On June 12 – 15, political leaders and criminal justice experts from five continents gathered in Madrid, Spain, for the Fifth World Congress Against the Death Penalty. The World Congress was co-sponsored by Spain, France, Norway, and Switzerland, and included delegates from over 90 countries. The delegation from the United States included Jerry Givens, a former correctional officer in Virginia, who assisted with the execution of 62 inmates. Givens became an opponent of the death penalty after his…

On June 12, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) held that former death row inmate Jerry Hartfield has been held in prison for 33 years despite having no valid conviction. The court concluded: “The status of the judgment of conviction is that Petitioner is under no conviction or sentence.” Hartfield, an illiterate man with an IQ of 51, had his capital conviction overturned by the same court in 1980 because his trial jury was improperly selected. The court ordered a new trial for Hartfield…

Paula Cooper, who was 15 years old at the time of her crime, and the youngest person ever sentenced to death in Indiana, will be released from prison on June 17, twenty-seven years after her conviction for the murder of 78-year-old Ruth Pelke. Her case received international attention, sparking a campaign that led to the commutation of her death sentence to 60 years in prison. An appeal to the Indiana Supreme Court received over 2 million signatures from around the world. Pope John Paul II…

On June 13, former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton told members of an Ohio task force reviewing the state’s capital punishment system that her views on the death penalty have moved from support to opposition. Justice Stratton, a Republican, served three terms on the Court, during which time the state executed 49 death row inmates by lethal injection. Stratton has opposed executing mentally ill defendants, but more recently explained that she is now opposed to the death…

On June 4, a federal magistrate ruled that the Louisiana Department of Safety and Corrections must reveal the details of the state’s lethal injection protocol. The ruling rejected the argument that disclosing the protocol would raise “serious security concerns.” The ruling by Judge Stephen Riedlinger was on a motion related to the lawsuit filed by death row inmates Jessie Hoffman and Christopher Sepulvado, who contended that due process requires they be fully informed about the state’s…

On June 10, three inmates on death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola) filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Department of Public Safety and Corrections for “appalling and extreme conditions… as a result of extreme heat.” The inmates requested that jail officials address the unsafe conditions in the death row facility. According to the lawsuit, the conditions prisoners suffer each summer constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. The heat index on…

In a recent op-ed in the Baltimore Sun, former FBI Director William Sessions (pictured) underscored the importance of reliable FBI forensic analysis in convicting the guilty and exonerating the innocent. Sessions provided the example of Willie Jerome Manning, who received a last-minute stay of execution in Mississippi in order to allow time to conduct testing on DNA evidence that could exonerate him. Manning was convicted in 1994 based on FBI testimony that has since been invalidated by the…

UPDATE: Gov. Mary Fallin refused to grant clemency to Davis. On June 6, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board recommended clemency for Brian Darrell Davis, who is facing execution on June 25. The board voted 4 – 1 to recommend that Davis’s death sentence be commuted to life in prison without parole. The parole board recommended clemency after Davis took responsibility for the crime and apologized to the family of the victim. “A weight lifted off of all of us,” said his mother, Yvonne Davis. “Brian…

On June 5, legislators in North Carolina voted to repeal the Racial Justice Act, which had allowed death row inmates to challenge their sentences using statistical evidence of racial bias. Since the law took effect in 2009, most of the inmates facing execution in North Carolina appealed their sentence under the law. In 2012, Marcus Robinson, who was the first defendant to receive a hearing under the RJA, was re-sentenced to life without parole due to evidence of racial bias in jury selection.

On May 30, California’s First District Court of Appeals upheld a Superior Court ruling that found the state’s lethal injection protocol invalid because the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation failed to comply with the requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act. A spokesman for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said that no decision has been made on whether the ruling will be appealed to the California Supreme Court or if the department will propose a new…